Abstract

The Role of Romantic Breakup in Increasing Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders: A Systematic Review

Author(s): Shahram Vaziri*, Roya Rezapour and Farah Lotfi Kashani

Several factors can exacerbate emotional disorders and delay treatment and recovery. One of the most important life events affecting such disorders is the failure of a relationship and the consequent romantic breakup as a result of the emotional deviation from the natural path that can lead to other disorders and symptoms of complicated grief and sadness. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the role of romantic breakup in exacerbating emotional disorders and intervening in treatment and recovery. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of romantic breakup in increased vulnerability toward a range of emotional disorders. In this systematic review, databases of Google Scholar, Science Direct, Web of Science and Pubmed were surfed to access English articles submitted between 2007 and 2021, and SID, Magiran and Ensani databases were surfed to explore Persian articles between 2013 and 2020. The results of the study showed that romantic breakup, experienced as a severe and traumatic stress, causes the experience of loss, affecting one’s expectation of the desired relationship as well as one’s assumptions about safety. As a result, the person experiences chronic feelings of emptiness and impatience, a lack of coherent sense of identity, as well as increased self-destructive behaviors and using ineffective coping strategies, higher psychological, emotional and physical distress, thus becomes more vulnerable to emotional disorders.

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